Sexuality has become inseparable from Cuban national identity. What is controlled through state repression of the so-called jineteros & jinteras is not exploitation, violence, or any objective form of harm but rather unacceptable sex and, through it, unacceptable ways of being.
This in an amazing article about Jineterismo, a neologism that encompasses sexual and affective relations between Cubans (read: Afro-Cuban and mixed-race women/men) and foreigners (read: white men/women), but which also implies a much wider range of other black- and grey-market activities such as selling bootleg rum and cigars, acting as a tout for restaurants and guest houses, and driving unlicensed taxis.
In her new book “From Cuba with Love: Sex and Money in the Twenty-First Century”, Megan Daigle explores the role of love, sexuality, and politics in contemporary Cuba. Highly recommended! I am looking forward to read it myself soon as well…
Five years ago, I spent six months living and working in Cuba – a fact that, in casual conversation, generally provokes expressions of envy and eye rolling about mojitos, salsa music, and academics who don’t really do any work. Cuba is as much a fantasy as a real place. It is totally invested with the romantic and ideological dreams of wildly disparate constituencies: armchair socialists and campus lefties, right-wing US politicians and Cuban émigrés, cocktail-swilling package holiday tourists, and adventure-seeking backpackers, amongst others. Cuba is a steamy and exotic Caribbean island, with rumba dancing and free-flowing rum. Cuba is a repressive and secretive regime. Cuba is a test workshop for socialist ambitions the world over. Cuba is a fantasy.
It was ideas like these about Cuba, Cuban politics, and Cuban people that drew me there in the first place, and the resulting book – built on those months of ethnographic research and…
View original post 2,659 more words
From Julie with Love 